In 1913 actor and filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille began shooting The Squaw Man In Hollywood.

A romance? A Western? Hollywood’s first feature-length film

It was a bit of an accident that DeMille and his crew were there. They had planned to locate to Flagstaff, Arizona, but the weather was so bad that December, nor were the vistas as spectacular as expected, that they took the train to the end of the line and decided to stay, the California climate and scenery being perfect for their endeavor.

The Squaw Man, a romantic drama based on a play, involves an English peer falsely accused of a crime his cousin had committed. He escapes to the American West and marries an Indian woman, only to return home, without his wife who had died, when he is cleared of all charges.

The six-reeler, the first feature length film made in Hollywood, was a huge success. DeMille, rather taken with the story, remade the move twice, again as a silent in 1918 and then as a talkie in 1931.

Tyrannical on the set, he wore a whistle around his neck and carried a large megaphone, so his instructions were loud and clear. Although not an actor’s director, he was loyal to his actors, casting Claudette Colbert, Gloria Swanson, Gary Cooper, Robert Preston, Paulette Goddard, and Charlton Heston in multiple pictures.

DeMille became a celebrity in his own right, dressing the part in an open-necked shirt, riding pants, and boots. However, in his cameo appearance as himself in Sunset Boulevard (1950), he wore a conservative dark suit and tie.

The director’s best known endeavors came late in his career. He made Samson and Delilah in 1949, The Greatest Show on Earth in 1952, and The Ten Commandments in 1956. In Egypt filming the Exodus scene for the later, then-75-year-old DeMille climbed to the top of the massive Ramesses set and suffered a near-fatal heart attack. Against his doctor’s orders, DeMille was back directing the film within a week.

Setting his sights on the stars, DeMille was planning a movie about space travel, when he died of a heart ailment in January, 1958.

Hollywood is haunted. Make no bones about it. There are skeletons in the closet and rumors rattling the actors. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the living from the walking dead. So, do as the fear-mongers on Sunset Boulevard do, and have a spirited Halloween.

Gloria Swanson and William Holden in Sunset Boulevard. Now that’s scary.

1. Rent a costume.

Are you having trouble deciding to be traditional or original? Dressing as a gangsta like James Cagney or a rapper such as Jay-Z? Then visit the Western Costume Company. They rent thousands of costumes from major motion pictures for Halloween. Even if you’re located in another part of the country, their website has some great ideas.

2. Wear makeup instead of a mask.

If you go this route, take some advice from Oscar-winning makeup effect artist Rick Baker: “Painting on a face is like painting on a canvas. You have to understand the principles of highlight and shadow.” To participate in the zombie zeitgeist, that’s so today, “Use oil-based paint sticks for the black shadow and a black eyebrow pencil to add lines and highlights.”

3. Put on your dancing shoes.

At Hollywood Forever Cemetery the party to celebrate Dia de los Meurtos, on November 2 this year, starts rockin’ after dark with hundreds of Aztec Ritual Dancers in full costume and musical performances on three stages. What’s happening at your local burying grounds?

4. Visit a haunted house.

If the current residents of the house where Ozzie and Harriet and their sons David and Rickie lived in Hollywood have experienced unusual phenomenon, who’s to say that the dwelling down the street wouldn’t make the perfect place to hold a séance.

5. Watch a movie.

Heads will roll and bodies will pile up, whether you’re into icky, creepy, bloody, gutsy, scary or all of the above. After all, movies are what Hollywood does best.

Hollywood’s Chinese Theatre was reopened in September after a four-month renovation. Now called TCL, rather than Grauman’s, after a Chinese television manufacturer bought naming rights, the venue now has one of the country’s largest IMAX screens and almost a thousand stadium seats, once again spacious enough to host movie premieres and accommodate the attendant paparazzi.

But the best news for movie fans? The iconic imprints of our favorite superstars are still in place.

In 1927 Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford, the King of Hollywood and America’s Sweetheart, as well as co-owners of the theater with Sid Grauman, were the first to officially step in wet cement. They each had their own square smack dab in front of the entrance.

Many others, by themselves, as a couple, or in a group, have followed.

It must be lonely on the range because singing cowboys signed for themselves and their horse. If you look around, you’ll find Tom Mix and Tony, Gene Autry and Champion, Roy Rogers and Trigger. “Happy trails” to you and your four-legged partner, too.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are co-located, although he got his square in 1938 and she followed, as usual, one year later.

Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy share space, as do Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Harpo, Zeppo, Chico, and Groucho, who also left an imprint of his cigar, fell all over themselves to get their hands dirty.

When Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was released in 1953, Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe were memorialized in adjoining areas, writing the movie title above their signatures. Three years later in honor of the movie Giant, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and director George Stevens left their mark on the same day. If this was some sort of stunt to publicize their movies, who cares?

Certainly not Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Matt Damon fans. A big crowd greeted them and producer Jerry Weintraub of Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen at their signing-in ceremony in 2007. As Clooney said, “If I had to be on my hands and knees with three other guys, I can’t think of three better guys to do it with.”

Do you think the Star Trek cast plus creator Gene Roddenberry were thinking the same thing when they were honored with a square in 1991? After all, together they had gone “where no man has gone before.” They are to the right of the box office. Star Wars stars Darth Vader, R2D2, and C3PO are on the left.

More recently the Twilight Saga‘s Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner celebrated the release of Breaking Dawn — Part 1 by participating in this Hollywood tradition. Stewart summed up the experience exclaiming, “I think this is the coolest thing ever.”

If the past is a guide to the future, as an ancient Chinese proverb divines, the popularity of the Chinese Theatre, regardless of its name, is ensured for a long time to come.

This review is by John Burroughs for Midwest Book Review and reposted below:

Hollywood or Bust: Movie Stars Dish on Following Their Dreams, Making It Big, and Surviving in Tinseltown collects more than 500 quotes, wisecracks, tell-it-like-it-is tips, and words of wisdom from popular stars and directors, including Ben Affleck to Jackie Chan, George Clooney, Carole Burnett, and many more. Grouped by subject, these vignettes offer a condensed glimpse of the trials and tribulations of the showbiz industry, and are just plain fun for a quick browse anytime. Hollywood or Bust also makes an excellent gift book for anyone who loves TV and movies! “I’d say the cut-off point for leading ladies today is thirty-five to forty whereas half the men in Hollywood get their start then. It’s a terrible double standard.” -Kathleen Turner, actress

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To view the original on the Midwest Book Review Bookwatch – August 2013, scroll down seven categories to Burroughs’ Bookshelf.

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of chatting with Betty Jo Tucker, movie critic extraordinaire and the editor/lead critic of ReelTalk Movie Reviews, and her co-host James Colt Harrison, also an author of thousands of reviews and articles about Hollywood, on Betty Jo’s radio program “Movie Addict Headquarters.”

My book Hollywood or Bust was the central point of our conversation, and I was peppered with lots of questions. Where did the idea come from? What was the biggest challenge in writing the book? How did you decide on the themes in the book? What are your favorite quotes in the book?

Oh, there are so many. I like the first quote in the book from Hilary Swank: “I’m just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream.” I think that sets the tone of the book because Hollywood and the movies, even life itself, are all about dreams.

On the loss of privacy that comes with fame, I like Jennifer Aniston’s quote: “When someone follows you all the way to the shop and watches you buy a roll of toilet paper, you know your life has changed.” The lesson here is to be careful for what you wish.

Betty Jo had her favorite quotes, too. She pointed out how touched she was by Charlie Chaplin saying, “I was loved by crowds, but I didn’t have a single close friend. I felt like the loneliest man alive,” and she played a few minutes of music Chaplin had composed for Modern Times. Afterwards she noted, “There he is making everyone else laugh, but he has such feeling.” And, then we moved on to more amusing topics.

James shared a story relating a chance meeting between Clark Gable and William Faulkner on the MGM lot where they were both working in the 1930s. Clark Gable knew who William Faulkner was, but Faulkner couldn’t return the compliment. Ah, writers. What would the movies be without them?

As screenwriter Joe Eszterhas noted: “Screenplays are a bitch to write. One man wrote War and Peace. Thirty-five screenwriters wrote The Flintstones.” Ah, Hollywood.

Happiness for movie fans like me is reading “Hollywood or Bust” by Susan Marg! I love all the quips, quotes, and off-the-cuff remarks from some of my favorite actors and actresses that are included in this fascinating anthology. So, of course, I found Marg’s revealing, star-studded book impossible to put down once I started it.

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As someone who has had a longstanding love affair with the cinema for over fifty years, I was surprised to find so many delicious surprises in Hollywood or Bust. For example, why did Mel Brooks start out as a drummer? What did Sandra Bullock learn from directing a film? How does Harrison Ford define a movie star? What did Elizabeth Taylor have in common with the critics? Why did Michael Caine want to win an Oscar? And that’s just the tip of the show-biz iceberg.

The complete title of this entertaining read is Hollywood or Bust: Movie Stars Dish on Following their Dreams, Making It Big, and Surviving in Tinseltown.And “dish” they do – from the price they pay for stardom and what they think about acting as a career to their feelings about each other as well as about directors, writers, studio executives, agents, and the Oscar. According to Marg, their observations “are caustic, critical and cynical on the one hand — but they are also eye opening, amusing, inspiring, and in some cases, even endearing.” Most of all — to me — they are extremely readable.

Marg calls herself a writer, a reader, a television watcher, a moviegoer, a theater attendee, and a museum visitor. She is also the author of Las Vegas Weddings: A Brief History, Celebrity Gossip, Everything Elvis and the Complete Chapel Guide, published by Harper Collins.

“Too much violence,” Michelle Pfeiffer said of Silence of the Lambs (1991). “Too much nudity,” she said of Basic Instinct (1992). And she passed on the leading roles in both. She had earlier said “no” to Pretty Woman and later to Casino (1995). Too many guns, gangs, and drugs, like Scarface (1983), perhaps?

So the parts went, respectively, to Jodie Foster, who won Best Actress Oscar, Sharon Stone, launching her career, Sharon Stone, again, earning her an Academy Award nomination, and Julia Roberts, whose place in the Hollywood firmament was cemented forever.

Pfeiffer isn’t the only one who has steered clear of what would be a career-defining character, albeit for someone else.

Kim Bassinger declined to play Catherine Trammel in Basic Instinct, but so did twelve other actresses.

Pretty in Pink actress Molly Ringwald passed on Pretty Woman, as well as Ghost, the highest grossing film in 1990 with five Academy Award nominations. She has since turned to writing.

Halle Berry, as well as thirty-four others, turned down Speed (1994), a critical and commercial success for everyone involved, including Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, who, by the way, wasn’t the first choice to play the male lead.

By the time production on Million Dollar Baby (2004) started, Bullock, who was slated to play Maggie, was committed to Miss Congeniality 2, of which she was a producer. Million Dollar Baby won Hilary Swank her second Oscar.

Although a People’s Choice favorite movie actress for years, Bullock didn’t get her Academy Award until 2009 for Blind Side, a role in which Julia Roberts wasn’t interested.

Well, even the most glamorous among us make mistakes. Shall I go on?

Having already starred with Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes steered clear of the Titanic (1997) for which Kate Winslet earned an Oscar nomination.

Winslet, in turn, following the success inTitanic, decided Shakespeare In Love (1998) wasn’t for her. Julia Roberts felt the same way, dropping out of the running, reportedly after Daniel Day-Lewis decided he wasn’t suited to be William Shakespeare. So Gwyneth Paltrow became Viola to Joseph Fiennes’ Shakespeare and won a Best Actress Oscar for doing so.

As Queen Elizabeth in said picture, Judy Dench, who was on screen for all of eight minutes in four short scenes, won the Academy Award for supporting actress. A lesser performer might have deemed the part too small.

The 2013 Beach Book Festival announced winners on June 10. Hollywood or Bust: Movie Stars Dish on Following their Dreams, Making it Big, and Surviving in Tinseltown placed first in the category Compilations/Anthologies.

Comprised of over five hundred quips, quotes, and off-the-cuff remarks from actors, directors, writers, and others involved in the business, Hollywood or Bust conveys what insiders think about themselves, their lives, their fame, their careers, each other, and the town itself. Even among those who have made it opinions vary as to whether or not the road trip down the yellow brick road to fame and fortune is worth the heartache and hard work.

Author Susan Marg is thrilled with the award. “The Beach Book Festival seemed like a natural competition for my book. Hollywood or Bust is a fun, summer read, filled with wit and whimsy.” She further adds, “I won’t be going to the rewards ceremony, however, as it takes place in New York.”

Hollywood or Bust, ISBN 978-0-578-11882-6, is a 182-page paperback book consisting of seven chapters and twenty original photographs. Topics cover dreams of success to attending the Oscars. It lists for $14.95.

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Susan Marg is the author of Las Vegas Weddings: A Brief History, Celebrity Gossip, Everything Elvis, and the Complete Chapel Guide, published by HarperCollins.Since she has moved her field of focus from the City of Lights to the City of Angels, her interest in popular culture has only intensified.

Let’s see how well you know your movie stars past and present. Identify the speaker of the quotes below. It’s multiple choice – how hard can it be?

Answers can be found in Hollywood or Bust: Movie Stars Dish on Following their Dreams, Making it Big, and Surviving in Tinseltown (the page number on which the quote can be found follows the quote) or on my Hollywood or Bust website.

Let me know how you did.

1. I don’t use any particular method. I’m from the let’s pretend school of acting. (page 59)

A. Harrison Ford

B. Robert Pattinson

C. William Shatner

D. Paris Hilton

E. Hugh Grant

2. I’ve always had confidence. Before I was famous, that confidence got me into trouble. After I got famous, it just got me into more trouble. (page 43)

A. Don Johnson

B. Sean Penn

C. Bruce Willis

D. Clark Gable

E. Eddie Murphy

3. The secret of having a personal life is not answering too many questions about it. (page 38)

A. Lindsay Lohan

B. Rock Hudson

C. Bill Clinton

D. Joan Collins

E. Barbra Streisand

4. I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion. (page 119)

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The More Things Change…

On this website I will look at history, her story, true stories and fiction, considering the quirky, crazy things we once said and did compared to the quirky, crazy way we live today. I’ll comment on gossip, too, what we talked about way back when and who captivates us currently. We might find out that the more things change the more they remain the same.

Ask Me Anything…

This memoir is the story of Marie Rudisill’s amazing life as told to Susan Marg. Well into her nineties she became a pop culture phenomenon as “The Fruitcake Lady” on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, going mouth to mouth with anyone who asked her a question or sought help with a problem. Get ready. You never know what she’ll say next. For more info, pleased visit “Books.” Now available on Amazon.